Biography
Walter Surovy, also credited as Walter Szurovy and sometimes Walter Molnar, was an Austrian stage and film actor. Born in Vienna on 28 May 1910, he began his career on the Vienna stage and appeared in leading roles at the Theater in der Josefstadt, the Salzburg Festival and the Neues Deutsches Theater. He starred in several European films in the late 1930s before emigrating to the United States.
In Hollywood he took a supporting role as Paul de Bursac in Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (1944). He founded the Polk-Szurovy talent agency in 1941 and later managed the career of his wife, mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens, whom he married in 1939. Their son, Nicolas Surovy, also became an actor. Surovy's final screen appearance was in the 1951 West German film Falschmünzer am Werk. He died in Manhattan on 4 November 2001.
